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"And so, I thought this might actually be kind of nice." - Seto Asaki

When it comes to manga, it's pretty easy to pass up oneshots for heavier, longer reading material. After all, it's only natural to assume that the longer a story is, the higher the number of opportunities for immersion, emotional investment, and overall enjoyment are, right?

Well, sure. But not always.

The easiest counterargument to the above paragraph is the old saying: "Less is More," and this unassuming anthology, one whose stories are an average of thirty pages long, is one of my favorite examples of this.

"I'll Send Her Home on the Last Train," ... a collection of oneshots named after one of its chapters, is sort of hit-or-miss, but it's memorable for two reasons:

1. It's more hit than miss.
2. When it hits, it's pretty darn impressive.

So, how does it do it? It does (or it doesn't) in different ways, depending on the chapter.

(If it wasn't obvious enough already, all stories in this anthology contain Yuri, Shoujo Ai, femslash, lesbians, whatever you want to label it as. The following review only applies to those who are interesting in reading this because of, or despite, that.)

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"From Aiu Station on the Hiragana Line"/"I'll Send Her Home on the Last Train": As the only two-shot in the anthology, I'll be reviewing them together.

Maybe it's the fact that this piece has two chapters to its name(s) instead of one, but I'm particularly fond of this story's characters. When an author can change his or her character drastically, but while still making it believable, it's successful character development. When said author can do the same thing in such a short page-span, it's even more impressive.

Without giving too much away, the growing relationship between our two main characters, Asaki and Tsune, changes both girls rather dramatically, and said change is sudden, believable, and incredibly sweet all at once.

While some scenes were eyebrow-raisers, on the whole it's funny, it's dramatic, it's touching, it's romantic. And it's hard to ask for more than that.

9/10


"Girls Planetarium": I liked this one. The dialogue is entertaining, and the characters themselves have personalities that are well-established (or as much as they could be for a oneshot, anyway), believable, and funny. The bedroom scenes (don't get any funny ideas) were pleasantly drawn, and they were a nice backdrop for the important conversations that took place in there.

However, with the word "funny" in mind, the last few pages are dedicated to the chapter's drama section. Given the tone of the majority of the piece, the tone shift in these pages feels sudden and even unnecessary. Such pacing is often a problem when it comes to oneshots, but alas.

Of course, it's not like the drama ruined the entire piece. It's just that if it had been toned down a little, or a lot, I would have been happier. As it is, it's still a cute read.

7.5/10


"Ephemeral Asterism": This one threw me for a bit of a loop. It's one of the more angsty chapters of the anthology, considering that it deals with a love triangle. Something that's worth mentioning here is the art in the early pages - it's used well to convey romantic hints and it took me more than one read to pick up on them. That's the not-loopy part. The loopy part was how it was resolved, and it didn't really sit too well with me. If you want an ending to a love triangle that goes a little different than the following scenario...

person 1: oh I love you
person 2: oh I love you too
person 3: dang it

... then maybe the uniqueness alone might make this one enjoyable. As for me, not so much.

6/10


"Forever Girls": Remember what I said about how this collection is memorable? That when it hits, it's pretty darn impressive?

This is what I was talking about.

For fear of giving anything away, I will just say that in 24 pages, I laughed, I smiled, I felt despair, and I came the closest to crying that I have in a very long time. And yes, that includes when I watched the Trinity of Sad Anime (Anohana Beats: After Story).

Maybe its brevity is an advantage; with less than thirty pages to work with, you might not be expecting the Feels, which allows them to rush out of nowhere, blindside you, and leave you teary-eyed and wondering how the heck they managed to do that.

This story makes the anthology. If there was ever one chapter to read out of all of them, it's this one. My favorite oneshot.

10/10


"At the Bottom of the Stairway to Adulthood": I sort of wish this wasn't the last story in the anthology. Still, I'll start with what I like about it.

It's one of the more original (or at least less common) concepts of the anthology, told from the viewpoint of a teenage girl who dislikes her sister and her sister's friends. It's also a cute, not-too-dramatic way to hint at the discovery of her sexual identity.

Now, I know that these chapters aren't supposed to be related, but reading this one after "Forever Girls" left a bad taste in my mouth. The coldness and distaste of the sister-sister relationship is both a departure from the usual sibling relationships you see in anime or manga and too depressingly realistic for my tastes, especially as the younger out of two siblings. In addition, the ending, while surprising, still left the aforementioned bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I'm just a sucker for happy endings, and I didn't exactly get that here.

It's not a bad story by any means, and I probably would have either liked it more if it was on its own or if it was earlier in the anthology. As it stands, I wish the collection would have ended with another story.

7/10


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Romance doesn't always need to be drawn out for volumes or episodes on end to be good reads or watches. "I'll Send Her Home on the Last Train," while imperfect, still makes a pretty darn good case for this. Its romance is sweet and its characters are very pleasantly fleshed out, something that manga ten times its length can be unable to achieve. Give it a try; it might surprise you.

Overall: 8/10

Re-Kan! is a supernatural comedy that can be funny, cute, or surprisingly touching...

...but the majority of it is so head-shakingly silly that I had a hard time enjoying all of it.

The concept isn't exactly original, and even this season there are shows that involve characters who can see ghosts (Kyoukai no Rinne, I'm looking at you), but Re-Kan! takes a much more lighthearted, easygoing, and realistic approach.

Well, as realistic as a show about ghosts can be.

Our story centers around routine interactions between Hibiki, our main character, and various spirits around town. Emphasis on "routine," because Hibiki greets and converses with these spirits in the same ... way that she would talk with her human friends, much to the chagrin of some characters...

Along the way, we inevitably learn of the backgrounds of many of the ghosts, and this is where the "surprisingly touching" part comes in. Even in this show, death is a somber topic, and as a result, Re-Kan! often ends its episodes with bitersweet realizations by living and dead characters who can accept the death of a loved one and move on with their lives. It made sitting through the rest of the episode worth it, usually.

By this, I am referring to the silliness that the rest of the show is dominated by. The show tends to fall back on running gags, and this inevitably leads to most of the jokes being rather predictable. A good amount of the characters (Yamada, Yamada's brother, the Ero-Neko) exist solely for the purpose of silly, nonsensical, or often perverted humor. As a result, they function as the subject of rage from the more violent characters, or ones who are simply fed up with their antics. And why wouldn't they be? Their lines are repetitive and their presence in the show gets stale pretty early on.

While some of the female characters suffer from the same issue, we at least get to see a more enjoyable relationship develop amongst them. Their bonds form primarily through, you guessed it, Hbiki's ability to see ghosts. Their progression as friends is so slow it's almost unseeable, but it's just another aspect of the show's slow, easygoing nature. Maybe I'm just simple-minded, but seeing those kinds of interactions is cute and enjoyable for me.

Particularly, the interactions between Hibiki and Inoue, our token tsundere, are pretty darn cute. Their biggest obstacle is that Inoue couldn't be a worse friend for Hibiki - she's terrified of ghosts! Despite her fear, she somehow gets dragged into all of Hibiki's ghost antics, and comes to accept Hibiki as she is... for the most part. Also, it's pretty obvious early on that Hibiki has a crush on Inoue, so for all you yuri fans out there (myself included), it's an added bonus.

Unfortunately, due to the show's short run time and episodic nature, the usual "characters-don't-get-enough-development-or-screentime" problem is prevalent here. As only one example, Inoue's relationship with Hibiki is cute, but she shows no hints of breaking out of her tsundere nature by the end of the show, which is rather disappointing considering how much she's changed her attitude towards her friends. Also, I would have expected her to at least try to act less terrified in the presence of ghosts, but I hardly got any of that. The rest of the human female cast got one episode of development, if they were lucky. I'm not sure if a 24-episode series would have dragged this show out or not, but again, 13 episodes certainly isn't enough for everyone.

Instead, what I got were situations where all I could think of was "Are they really going to spend ten minutes on this subject?" I don't think I needed Yamada's older brother to talk about how much he loves girls in swimsuits for ten minutes, or a spirit that jumps off of a cliff everyday for a silly reason, or a zombie-loving girl running all over town because she had a possessed zombie doll. I know it's supposed to be a comedy, but these are more cases where the comedy either fell flat for me or was so silly, all I could do was sigh.

The openings and endings are cute... however, there was an obvious drop in animation quality between the opening and the rest of the show. It's like 70% of the budget went into animating the opening, and the rest went into the actual content. Character and background designs, while cute and colorful, were average at best and disappointing in the context of the opening.

Openings and endings aside, the soundtrack is quite relaxing. I was particularly fond of the acoustic-centric inserts, and it emphasized the "slice-of-life" feel that I am so attracted to.

Re-Kan! has its moments, but the moments are too far in between the stale jokes and the eyebrow-raising scenarios. It's entertaining enough, and it's not the worst option if a break from the standard shounen/ecchi/harem fare is wanted. It's just not the best option, either.

*Some spoilers may follow*

I went into this show with unrealistically high expectations, since I based them completely off of the mysterious key visual and the fact that I have yet to watch another magical girl anime that is true to its genre. (Kill La Kill doesn't count.)

It was only natural that I was disappointed by the first episode... and the next one... and the one after that. From a mostly flat protagonist whose dialogue mostly consists of "Huh?" and repeating things that other characters have just said to characters who get a single episode of development which is subsequently ignored, the show was almost a ... chore to watch and I was ready to give up on it and dismiss it as a disappointment.

That is, for the first eight episodes. That's when I was forcefully reminded that this show was made by Gainax, and that they may or may not have a little surprise or two up their sleeve.

In this case, they did, and I believe this show was saved by its lone male character, Minato.

Unlike the other main characters, Minato spends most of his screentime shrouded in mystery, and has conversations with Subaru (the aforementioned ditzy protagonist) that seemingly serve only to give her some kind of motivation. This is in stark contrast to his apparent role as the antagonist of the show, because when he is in his Mahou Shounen outfit, he is only focused on stopping the girls from collecting the fragments. It is in this manner that the first two-thirds of the show follows this pattern every episode:

* Character has some backstory
* Subaru has a conversation with Minato
* Fragment appears
* Girls chase the fragment, Minato tries and fails to stop them
* Girls collect the fragment, everyone is happy for the most part

(not necessarily in that order)

It came off as formulaic, even to me who has never watched a magical girl anime. But perhaps this was buildup to the last few episodes, where Minato's past (and possible affiliation with other characters) is revealed. And it is here that the show begins to deviate (for the better) from its cyclical first half, and the plot twists that followed showed a surprising amount of promise. An anime that can keep me guessing, especially after being predictable for the majority of its runtime, is one that proves that it has my attention.

Aesthetically, the the space scenes are among the standouts of this show. Not only are they scientifically accurate, but as a sucker for stargazing myself, they were striking, colorful, and very pleasing to look at. The opening is also a high point, and along with being incredibly catchy, it is my favorite opening this season. The ending is cute, but nothing special.

Other than Minato, there isn't much to say in the character department, design-wise and complexity-wise. It's pretty apparent that they were designed with moe in mind, but that's all there is to it. If there's anything to take away from them, it's that 12 episodes probably isn't enough to give each girl enough development to actually make them interesting and feasible. More often than not, I felt that they were just there to collect the fragments. That's not too far from the truth, but it left me wishing that they were a little less flat. This just goes to show how forgettable most of the character development was.

Despite all of my grievances, the show has enough interesting plot twists and high points to leave me feeling satisfied. It's far from the best show I've ever seen, or even seen this season, and it may prove to be forgettable, but it pleasantly surprised me. Maybe my complaints won't reflect in my overall score, or maybe I'm just giving it too much credit, but I liked it in the end, and that's all I can ask for. Who knew that a Mahou Shoujo anime would be saved by a Mahou Shounen?